What Does It Mean To Be A 'Popular' President, And Who Are The Popular Ones?

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"What Does It Mean To Be A 'Popular' President, And Who Are The Popular Ones?"
HEM Tiberius
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Presidential approval polling has been a part of Europeia since almost the start of the region. Everybody is interested in what the collective region thinks of our leaders, and these numbers have been used to boost up strong executives and topple weaker ones. Regional papers plaster these "approval ratings" on their pages, but what exactly do they mean?

In the modern United States, any Presidential approval rating over 50% is seen as relatively strong. In Europeia, we are considerably more generous than that, only rarely returning a Presidential rating in the 50% range.

So how do we use these ratings to distinguish between popular Presidents from unpopular ones? After all, without the proper context, a number is just a number.

To answer this question, ENN embarked on a six-month long project. Our goal: to compile as many Presidential Approval Ratings as possible. I scoured old newspaper archives, the Republic Square, the Grand Hall, and countless (thankfully undeleted) EBC articles. The result is a comprehensive census of 75 different approval ratings, across all ten years, from 29 different Presidents.

There are a few notes of caution. Firstly, the variety of polling methods used across history was immense. Rather than try to evaluate each method, I have included all polls of all methods. Initially, I attempted to categorize the polling method by "type" and draw conclusions, but the variety was simply too scattered.

Secondly, when it comes to ranking the Presidents, some Presidents have more uncertainty around their true score than others. Some had their n=1, some had their n=10. Basically, I am more confident about Writinglegend's average approval rating than Pineapleboy's. I considered having a sample threshold for inclusion, but that's not really any fun.

Finally, I almost certainly missed some polls—especially from 2014, which was for some reason very tricky to find opinion polling? I might go through and add more data in the future, but this will have to do for now!

So what does it mean to be a 'popular' President?

The median approval rating for a President in Europeia is 68%. For reference, the average is 65.93%, but I'll be relying mostly on the median here.

The five number summary of Presidential approval ratings is below:

Minimum: 16.00%
1st Quartile:58.25%
Median:68.00%
3rd Quartile:74.00%
Maximum:96.50%


When we put that in a visual form, we get this box-and-whisker plot:


We now have all Presidential Approval Ratings essentially divided into fourths. That is to say, 25% of all approval ratings lay below Q1, 25% lay between Q1 and the median, 25% lay between the median and Q3, and 25% lay above Q3.

So, if you're the President, your approval rating is in the bottom 25% of all approval ratings if it is below 58.25. Your approval rating is in the middle 50% of all approval ratings if it's in between 58.25% and 73.99%. If your approval rating is above 74%, then you are in the top 25% of all approval ratings.

Unpopular Below 58.25%
Somewhat UnpopularBetween 58.25% and 67.99%
Somewhat PopularBetween 68.00% and 73.99%
Popular74.00% and above


Who are the popular Presidents?

We have calculated the average approval rating from Presidents, across multiple terms if applicable. We then arranged those ratings in ascending order and inserted the key numbers from the five number summary into the arrangement. Here's what we found:


There are only six Presidents who can claim to be unusually popular—that's to say, having an approval rating that's in the top 25% of approval ratings. Presidents Pineapleboy, Vinage, Asianatic, Skizzy Grey, and Writinglegend snag that honor.

Six Presidents have the distinction of being unusually unpopular, having ratings in the bottom 25% of all approval ratings: Presidents Pez201, Calvin Coolidge, Darcness, Sopo, Aramor, Aexnidral, and Falconias.

Then of course, there's the rest of the Presidents with relatively boring approval ratings that fall within the middle 50% of approval ratings. Some are slightly worse (Q1 to median) or better (median to Q3) than the others, but much less remarkable.

These guys shouldn't necessarily be celebrating though. Most notably, Presidents HEM, Rougiers, Rachel, and Oliver Grey all missed the loser's circle by less than 2%.

Final fun fact before exiting: PhDre actually was the median, with an average approval rating of 68%.
 
Did my terms poll similarly or was there a big difference between them (assuming there was polling for all)?

Very interesting data indeed.
 
This is an excellent piece of journalism. Thank you for putting so much time and effort on this article. I really quite enjoyed the box-and-whisker plot and the bar graph especially.
 
This is interesting. Once you add Darcness' approval #'s I think this will actually highlight a trend: over the years we've started judging our leaders more harshly (for better, or for worse), specifically starting in 2015 onward.
 
Aexnidaral Seymour said:
This is interesting. Once you add Darcness' approval #'s I think this will actually highlight a trend: over the years we've started judging our leaders more harshly (for better, or for worse), specifically starting in 2015 onward.
Added Darcness. Thankfully didn't alter any of the five number summaries.

Here's the average approval rating by year:



I think it's tough to make the case that over time we've been judging our leaders more harshly as time has gone on. I think there's certainly a case that 2012 - 2015 was a period where we judged unusually softly, and then things have started to become more adversarial since.
 
Great article, and interesting trendline. Maybe our Presidents really have been worse. :D
 
Wow. Fascinating time and effort for fascinating conclusions.
To be clear, as Sopo said how did you calculate for Presidents having had more than one term? Averaged the approval ratings?
 
Airbus said:
Wow. Fascinating time and effort for fascinating conclusions.
To be clear, as Sopo said how did you calculate for Presidents having had more than one term? Averaged the approval ratings?
Yes, I averaged all the ratings!
 
This is really interesting, and I love how you visualized everything. Most notably, I didn't even realize PhDre was a former president, much less a pretty popular one. I really need to catch up on Euro history... :emb:
 
It’s amazing that Gleg is in the top quartile, serving so many times during an era where we’ve held our Presidents to ever more exacting standards.
 
Kylia Quilor said:
Did I just never get any polls on my popularity?
2014 was a blackhole in finding polling data. I am 99% there was at least one approval rating poll for you, but eventually I gave up.
 
HEM said:
Kylia Quilor said:
Did I just never get any polls on my popularity?
2014 was a blackhole in finding polling data. I am 99% there was at least one approval rating poll for you, but eventually I gave up.
Fair enough. But I was President in 2013.
 
Kylia Quilor said:
HEM said:
Kylia Quilor said:
Did I just never get any polls on my popularity?
2014 was a blackhole in finding polling data. I am 99% there was at least one approval rating poll for you, but eventually I gave up.
Fair enough. But I was President in 2013.
Oh, well then same thing but different year.
 
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